


Let's do it...

by experimentingwithbackcombing



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/experimentingwithbackcombing/pseuds/experimentingwithbackcombing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vienna, 1939: Rose Schindler is a singer in an illicit jazz club in Vienna.  One evening she meets a very depressed, very skinny SS officer...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's do it...

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: attempted suicide.

It is very easy to fall into something that instinct rejects. It starts with a decision, and it is probably a simple one, like taking a right instead of a left. Cause and effect begin to bump into each other, and it becomes easy to follow the current instead of doubling back and course correcting.  
For some reason he can’t decide, he wants to tell her this. He wants to lean into her and tell her his secrets. He wants her to cry out from under him, to yell his name beneath the touch of his fingers, and after, to hear her quietly murmur forgiveness. He wants it from her; he wants to hand half of himself to her even though it is a favor he could never ask. So for now, he contents himself with watching her sleep.

\--  
1939

It was a bad idea. Honestly, he isn’t sure what he’d been thinking.

He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shuffles along the dark streets with his head down. He can’t be seen in this neighborhood, not out of   
uniform.

After walking several blocks he finds a shadowy alleyway where he pulls over and leans against the brick. His hands are shaking as he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a box of strike-anywhere matches. He takes a cigarette and fumbles it up to his lips, extracts a match and drags it against the wall, and the flame flares for a moment, lighting up the alley and casting a yellow shadow across his face. He hopes nobody has seen it, and he lights the tip of the cigarette, inhaling deeply.

The smoke rushes into his lungs, giving him a lightheaded sensation he anticipates on the first drag, and his hands slowly begin to stop shaking. It was a bad, dirty habit, but it was better than finishing half a bottle of contraband whiskey in a single evening like he used to.  
He rakes his fingers through his hair, his head leaning into the brick building. He has to be back to Innere Stadt by daybreak, or people would ask questions, though he could probably write it off as a night out drinking gone awry. It wouldn’t be terribly far from the truth, but officers of the SS were supposed to set an example.

He’d learned about the place from a small piece of intelligence that had come across his desk. A nightclub in Vienna that catered to dissidents. It had been a bar that catered to Socialist Democrats before the war, but had since become a sort of underground meeting place for those who didn’t align themselves with the Nazi agenda.

When he’d first gotten the file, he’d buried it. He’d told himself that he would need to gather more information before taking action, but he knew other men who had wrought destruction on far less. He should have gathered a band of Gestapo, raided the place, and arrested anyone inside, but he’d had no real desire to do so. 

In fact, for a long time, he’d wanted to do quite the opposite.  
\--

It's a dingy place, a hidden corner of Vienna. It's one of the last places that hasn't been shut down, one of the few secret places remaining.  
It maintains a mask of respectability, even if it is in a basement. They serve German spirits and light German cigarettes, and the German government--at least so far--hasn't found a reason to question an institution that procures its resources so loyally and in such great quantities.  
The clientele is discreet. They dress well--thoroughly middle class--and they speak in hushed voices. There's never been an incident of raucous behavior. Nobody uses their real names. That's one of the most important rules they have. Everyone has an alias.

She sidles up to the microphone wearing a slinky dress that hugs her body the way a good whiskey blankets a sharp wit. It sparkles against the soft light of the stage, flecks of champagne light dancing around the walls as she cups her hand around the cool metal of the microphone.

Her piano man sits waiting on the bench behind her. It's a lovely instrument: black and shiny, probably the most expensive thing in the place, likely the entire neighborhood, and she closes her eyes, lets her body pause for a moment, lets her mind sink into the expectant silence of the room where the hushed conversations have halted, turning their attention to the small stage.

She croons. It's an American song, "Night and Day." She sings it an octave higher that it was originally written, but her voice still hits the lower notes in a way the smolders. Her voice is pleasantly raspy somehow suggests authority, though she has none, and her audience is held captive for the duration of the song.

She didn't start out a singer in a nightclub. She used to work in a shop that sold textiles and finished garments, a small one run by a kind Jewish man named Heinrich Shnayder, but almost a year ago it had been raided and torched by a mob of Nazis, and Herr Shnayder had been taken away with the rest of his family. She hadn't seen or heard from them since.

The least of her problems was that she was out of a job; nevertheless, she had to bring in money, and because Jews had run so many of the shops in the garment district, she had to take whatever job she could get.

The club, der Strudel, was frequented by people who either couldn't get out of Austria or wouldn't as a matter of principle. Many were of both persuasions, and likely wouldn't have left even if they could. It was a dangerous time to live in Vienna, but if everyone ran from the Nazis, people reasoned, there would be no one to stand up against them.

Rose Schindler, too, was a woman of principle, but her main reason for remaining in Vienna was that she simply wasn't in a financial situation to get out. She lived with her mother in a small flat in Meilding, and everyday she would tram into Innere Stadt and the surrounding districts, looking for work, but employment had been competitive and difficult to come by, until she came across the club.

After her set, she smiles teasingly at the guests, who applaud as she leaves the stage and eventually return to their conversations. She walks over to the bar where a few men are seated, and a tall man stands behind the counter, where he is drawing the tap of an amber-colored beer. He is Hans, the man who hired her-- tall and handsome and quick with a double entendre, and quite frankly, she thinks, lucky to be standing here. She has a feeling that he's had the type of liaisons of which the Nazis wouldn't be overly fond.

"Rosie!" he says, cracking a smile. "Shining and beautiful as always. What can I get you?" He usually makes the staff pay for any refreshments they want for themselves, but Hans likes Rose, and they look out for one another, so she practically has an unlimited tab. 

"Just seltzer, thanks, Jack," she says. The Anglicized version of his name comes out stilted in her Viennese accent which always seems to vanish when she sings songs in English.

They have piss-poor code names. He calls her Rosie and she calls him Jack, and it isn't terribly judicious of them, but they never use last names, so it seems to suffice.

She'll sing another half set before the night is done, this time a medley of German and Austrian numbers for good measure, and eventually people will file out of the bar and return the next evening to repeat the same routine.

She sips on her seltzer and leans against the bar, listening to the conversations. Der Strudel houses dangerous conversations; it's why people come. It's one of the last places the Nazis haven't bothered to suspect.

"That man at the end of the bar," Jack says in a hushed voice.

"Who?" she whispers. She looks around discreetly towards the end of the bar to the stool closest to the door.

"The skinny one with the hair." Jack's voice definitely suggests appreciation.

"What about him?"

"Have you seen him before?" 

"No, never. Have you?"

"No," he responds, his brow furrowing. "He ordered that beer before I got your seltzer. The Zeit Gebieter brew I ordered from Salzburg."

"Haven't tried it," she says. 

"Strong stuff."

"Do you think we should keep an eye on him?" she asks looking down the way. He isn't talking to anyone and has a determined sort of look on his face mixed with something she can't place. It was important they kept tabs on the clientele, especially if they were new. They could be spies or Nazi thugs looking to chip away at the opposition.

"Probably. You should go talk to him," he says, his eyebrows waggling.

"What, and seduce information out of him?" Rosa was pretty in a normal kind of way, but even so, she found her blond hair and charming demeanor did her favors.

"I guess I could," Jack says smiling, "but if he does turn out to be a Nazi, that might not turn out so well for me."

She frowns a bit at his flippancy, the casual nature with which he talks about the world around them, the rumors of the deaths, the missing Jews, the horrible crimes breaking the back of Austria. But how else were you supposed to live everyday? 

"You're right," she says, and pushes her self away from the bar, taking her seltzer with her. She sways her hips a bit as she walks, and it attracts the eyes of some men, but the man at the end of the bar continues to stare down at his glass.

As she approaches him, she finds that he's clean-shaven. His hair is well kept and his clothing looks relatively new. He has dark sideburns that make their way down his face that contrast the paleness of his skin--which she might call downright pasty--but they make his cheekbones jump for miles. He doesn't look like the kind of bloke who would come to this sort of venue. Most people here haven't had new clothes in a while.

"How's your drink?" she asks, hopefully casually. She doesn't feel like a nightclub singer no matter how much eye makeup she puts on, or how many new dresses are in her wardrobe, and subsequently, she doesn't do temptress very well. Not that she's trying to tempt him, not in that way, at least.

"It's fine," he responds, resolutely not making eye contact. 

"Interesting choice is all I'm saying."

He finally looks around at her wearing a look of irritation mixed with caution. "So were you stalking the barman or stalking me?"

"Not stalking," she responds, shrugging her shoulders, "just paying attention. We do that here."

"Who's 'we'?" 

Before she says something, she stops short. It wasn't as if she was going to say "the resistance" or "dissenters" but she could feel something dangerous about to spill from her tongue.

"Management," she says simply. She hears how trite it sounds, but he doesn't seem to react.

"Right," he responds, taking a long sip from his beer and standing. "This was a bad idea." He shrugs on his leather jacket.

"What's your name?" she says. 

She's not expecting a real name. But when he looks her up and down, seeming to assess her for she isn't sure what, and says, "The Doctor," she can't help but let out a snort of laughter.

"I'm sorry!" she says immediately, but the damage is done, and it's when he turns towards the door when she sees it, the look she couldn't place earlier from across the bar. 

It's defeat.

\--

He doesn't come back for a week. She isn't surprised, really, but his hasty exit had made her worry that there was something more sinister afoot. Between sets and helping Jack behind the bar, she barely has time to think, but when she does, she finds herself wondering about him.

It was probably nothing, and he was probably just someone looking to skirt the rules a little despite his better judgment and who got cold feet in the moment. But there was something about his face, she thought, the way his jaw had been set with so much tension she thought it might be wired shut despite the fact that he had spoken to her, that made her think he wasn't just a normal man in a bar.

So the next week when she opens the evening with "Anything Goes"--this time with couple of trumpets to join her piano man--she's both surprised and expecting to see him leaning against the bar.

Though the stage lights are bright, she can see can him tucked into the shadows. He's thin, she thinks, skinny, even, before remembering to vary her gaze around the audience. She flicks her lips into a very decided smile, rocks her bum ever–so-slightly to the rhythm of the music. They like her here, sometimes too much, and more than once she's been on the receiving end of remarks she considered thoroughly rude.

Several songs later, she steps down from the stage, teetering on her heels. She walks over to the bar again, and he's standing there looking at her. He has a drink in his hand and he extends it to her, which she accepts with some hesitance. 

"You're back," she says, looking into the crowd of people rather than in his direction. 

"Yep."

She takes a sip of her drink. It's seltzer and lime.

"Why are you here?" she asks. 

"It's late. People go to clubs when it's late."

"Not to these kinds of clubs."

"You sing beautifully," he says. She's not sure if he's intentionally changing the subject, or if his mind simply flits to the next thing before he finishes the previous thought.

“Thanks,” she says. “Why did you come back?” she asks again. From the corner of her eye, she can see Jack down the bar staring holes at them as he makes change.

The Doctor looks over to her as they watch a jazz quartet take the stage.

The truth was, he couldn’t not come back. When he’d returned to work the morning after at the Hotel Metropole, he felt an odd sort of magnetism, a stupid kind of allure that crawled in the back of his brain.  
He’d sat in his office, a windowless affair slinked in shadow. He’s seen a lot of evil, and he could smell it there the same way you smell must in the pages of old books.

“You said it was a bad idea,” he hears her say as he shakes his head out of his thoughts and the swell of music fills his ears again.

“It is a bad idea,” he responds.

“But you’re still here.”

He turns to her, wearing a smile that looks both genuine and sardonic. “I’d say it’s about time more people started to have more bad ideas, don’t you?”  
She smiles, nods, and motions to Jack to pour him another drink.

“Well then, Doctor, you can call me Rose.”

\--

He has bad nights. Even though he’s found a new place to go, even when--for a couple of hours--he lets himself shrug off his guilt, he still has nights when he knows he is trapped and crushed by a creed of hatred he can’t remember signing up for.

The world becomes small and he prays so hard to a god he knows doesn’t exist to forgive him, to save him, to have mercy and let him end.

He finds himself walking along the quay that trims the Donaukanal. It is very late and he had tucked into a bottle of schnapps earlier that night while he stood in his rooms staring blankly into the wall, his hand coming up to his face when he rubbed his stubble absentmindedly.

It is a bad night, but it is beautiful. It is mild outside, the May air finally settling into the city streets. The roads are silent with the same weariness he himself feels, and he looks down at the pavement and shoves his hands in his pockets, listening only to the sounds of his shoes against the concrete and the gentle spate of water.

He turns onto a footbridge, walks until he as at the top of its arch. The water below is black and livid. It is likely still cold from winter. Would it prickle against his skin, or would it shoot through his nerves?

He puts his feet on the cast-iron railing and braces his hands along the top, his knuckles turning white.

What if? What if right now? No one would see him. He was significant enough that they would notice his absence, but not so much that they would miss him for long. 

But it wouldn’t be as easy as hitting the water and letting his limbs flounder until the current took him under and water shot through his lungs. He could swim. 

It would have to be deliberate. There would have to be two moments of decision: one to jump, and one to stop fighting.

He inhales deeply, and the rush of air makes his head light. The odor off the canal is strangely brackish though the water is fresh. It smells stale, and when the sun came up the next morning, it would be a hopeless sort of greyish-green color.

The alcohol is beginning to unravel its grip around his brain and his pulse begins to pick up. He would need to do it now or he would end up crawling back home more dismal than ever.

He sheds his leather jacket and considers leaving it on the bridge, but something stops him, and instead he leans over the railing and drops it into the current, where it sinks slightly before getting pulled away.

There will be two moments of decision: one to jump, and one to stop fighting.

He lifts his feet so that he is standing on the rail, bracing himself on the beams. 

He remembers when Vienna used to be so alive. The streets were alight with laughter and jazz flowed as abundantly as booze. He remembers when he drank to celebrate, though more often now it is to dull any sort of real feeling at all.

He could almost feel it again. In the moment before jumping, he could smell the sweetness of rain on pavement, when Spring really smelled like Spring. That’s what he would imagine he was jumping into again: Viennese Spring before its darkest days.

He puts one foot out, ready for oblivion, when he hears it.

“Doctor?”

It is a quiet sound, so soft, and he only listens because it is either that or listen to the raging doubt of his own head.

“Doctor!” he hears again, but now it is not so soft, and he looks behind him, searching for its origin.

She is standing there, her hands clutching the handles of a bicycle, the girl from the club, Rose, not looking like a club singer at all, but a regular girl.

He wants to turn around, step off the rail, and unmake his first decision. He’s undecided it already, and he moves his foot to jump back to the pavement, but   
he slips, wobbles, and falls off the edge. There is a splash and a gurgling sound.

He makes a decision.

The world goes dark.

\--

When he wakes up, the light is still soft. It is early morning and the shutters are open, letting in a gentle trickle of sunshine and a crisp morning breeze.

He moans softly and she hurries over, her stomach churning both with fear and concerned anxiety.

He opens his eyes and closes them quickly, and she moves to close the shutters.

 

When she returns to the bed, his eyes are open but heavy. He looks so exhausted.

“Pink,” he mutters. She looks around the room, baffled. Perhaps it’s just another false alarm; he’d woken several times throughout the night mumbling in his sleep.

“Pink?” she asks.

“Your dress,” he says. “It’s pink.”

She looks down at her dress. It’s a plain cotton dress that ends just below her knees.

“Yes, it is,” she agrees, confused.

“’S different.”

She pieces together what he’s trying to say. He’s only seen her in the club before where she’s covered in lipstick and swathed in dramatic dresses that make her feel like she’s in costume.

“Not on the job,” she replies simply.

“I like it,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Where are we?” He looks around the room. It is small and the walls are a pleasant shade of buttercream yellow. The furnishings are modest and cheap. On either side of the bed is a window with green shudders.

“My flat,” she responds.

“Which is where?”

“Meilding.”

“Meilding? That’s quite a distance from where we…ran into each other.”

“I had help,” she says simply.

There is a beat of silence and she reaches over to the nightstand and pours him a glass of water from the pitcher.

“What were you doing there?” he asks as she hands him the glass.

“I could ask you the same.”

“But you’d know the answer.”

Her lips form a line and she nods, looking away.

“What are you asking me as?” she asks, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears that she is convinced he can hear it.

“How do you mean?”

She stands up from sitting on the bedside, and walks over to where his trousers are draped over a wooden chair. On its seat is a soggy pile of folded papers.

“Mum found these when she was, uh, getting you out of your wet clothes. The trousers we managed to save, by the way, but the shirt was ruined.”

She hands him the stack of papers, which are becoming stiff as they dry.

He notices the cautious tone in her voice, but he doesn’t sense fear or terror as he thinks most people in her position probably would. His voice quavers. “So…you know.”

“You’re one of them.”

She looks down at his papers. They state his name, rank, and other pertinent identifying information.

“Yes.”

“Have you been spying on us?”

“No,” he says.

“How can I believe you?”

“You can’t, really. But I promise I wasn’t spying on the club.”

“Then what were you doing?”

“What is anybody doing? Trying to pretend Austria isn’t dying.”

He sighs and feels his head spin.

“What happened to me?”

“You slipped and fell off the bridge. You don’t remember that part?”

“I remember hearing your voice and trying to turn and losing my balance.”

“Why does my head hurt?” he continues.

“You must have hit it on your way down. When I jumped in you were still conscious, but you kept going in and out of it when I tried to drag you back up on the quay.”

“You jumped in and dragged me out?” he says, his eyes wide with, is it shock? Anger?

“Why else do you think you’re still alive?”

“I…” He looks troubled and confused. “Thank you,” he says eventually.

“You’re welcome, I think.”

“Why were you all the way over by the canal? It isn’t exactly close to Meilding or the club.”

She wants to tell him, but if she does, she would be risking herself, Jack, and everyone in the club.

“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you.”

But he has. He could have turned her in at any time. He could have brought an entire legion of Gestapo and raided der Strudel, but he hadn’t. Instead, she’d found him ready to jump off of a bridge.

“No, I suppose I haven’t.”

There is another pause, another moment when she can’t think of anything to say, and he looks like he can’t either.

“But what will it take?” he says eventually.

“It’s pretty hard to trust someone who has papers identifying them as an officer of the SS.”

“I know.” He looks around the room as if he is searching for the right words. “If it wasn’t for you,” he continues after a pregnant moment, “I’d be drowned at the bottom of the canal, and that’s, I think, how I would have wanted it. But now I’m not so sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you called out to me, at first I thought I was hearing voices, but then I heard you again…and I can’t explain it, but I didn’t want to jump anymore. I’d already made my decision, but when you spoke…it’s like I just suddenly changed my mind, like a switch.”

“I’m hardly a Siren.”

“Maybe you are in your own way.”

She looks at him and can’t decide what to say, but she knows somehow that at least for now, she’s not in any danger. She can’t say that she trusts him, but she certainly doesn’t think he means her ill.

“What time is it?” he asks. She looks at her watch and opens the window again.

“About six-thirty.”

“I need to get back,” he says, pushing the blankets back.

“You hit your head; you really shouldn’t--”

“But if I don’t, they’ll want to know where I was. That’s the thing about the Nazis, and hopefully why their days are numbered: they don’t even trust their own.”

“You really don’t consider yourself one of them?”

“I did once. Austria was broken from the War, and the Nazis brought an ounce of prosperity. It almost felt normal again, but they’re nothing but thugs and murderers.”

“I don’t remember much of Vienna after the War.”

“How old are you?” 

“Nineteen,” she says, blushing. She hadn’t even been alive during the Great War, and she’s looked at him with lust. Sometimes, like at the club, it had been by design, but other times, like now, she hadn’t realized she’d been doing it. She could see the age on his face. He must be at least fifteen years older than her.

“Nineteen,” he repeats, as if confirming an unwanted fact. “So young.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t act like you’re nineteen.” He’s pulled himself out of bed now, and is sitting with his feet on the floor.

She shrugs.

“Do you have a shirt I could borrow?” he says suddenly. The change of subject is abrupt but not unwelcome.

“Yes, hold on.” 

When she returns she’s carrying a white shirt and a pinstriped jacket, which she hands to him.

“Keep them. They were my dad’s. He’s not exactly using them anymore.”

He smiles in thanks and puts on the shirt.

“Do you still have that leather jacket of yours?”

He gives a pained expression. “No,” he says. “I dropped it into the canal.”

“Pity. I rather liked that jacket.”

Now it’s he who blushes, and he shrugs on the jacket. She hands him his trousers and turns away so that he can change.

“You really shouldn’t go yet,” she says when they are at the door.

“It sounds like you’re trying to keep me here,” he teases.

“No! It’s just…your head! You’ve hit your head, and you shouldn’t leave yet.”

“I’m fine.” He pauses. “I will be fine.”

“Promise me you won’t do it again.”

“Jump off of bridges? No, Rose, I can safely say that I won’t be jumping off of any more bridges.”

“Promise you won’t try something like it.”

“I promise.”

She smiles and feels a wave of relief she isn’t sure she ought to feel.

“Thank you,” he says again, before kissing her cheek and turning to walk down the street towards Innere Stadt.

\--

This time, it is only three days before he returns to der Strudel. He comes earlier in the night, only an hour after they open. She isn’t performing tonight and instead helps Jack behind the bar. She gets good tips on those nights and Jack is convinced that they sell more drinks when she’s behind the counter.

When she sees him, he looks weary, but not quite so defeated. She feels a strange surge of something that she cannot place. It is equal parts hesitance and excitement. There is guilt there, too, and a pang of fear that lingers, but she can’t stop herself from smiling when he catches her eye.

He comes up to the bar and orders a beer, this time their most popular pilsner.

“Branching out?” she asks, her eyebrow arching. Her tongue catches between her teeth and he can see his jaw tighten and then relax.

“Getting to know the wares of the place,” he replies, winking.

He takes a seat at one of the barstools close to the taps, so that even though she has to get the orders of other customers, they can throw each other glances and snippets of conversation.

When a young pianist takes the stage, the orders drop off as people sit to listen and others dance. This is when he turns to her, looks at her leaning gently on a shelf of contraband vodka in a moment of reprieve, and finishes off the last swallow of beer.

“Leaving?” she asks, turning her head from the stage to him.

“No, actually,” he starts, “I thought you might want to dance.”

There is a beat of silence when she says nothing, and the smooth tune on the piano calms the air. She looks over to Jack, who is looking warily at them. He simply nods his head.

“Yes, all right,” she says, and reaches behind her to untie her waist apron to reveal where her skirt—a soft shade of periwinkle—connects with her neatly tucked-in eyelet blouse.

When she walks around the counter, he can’t take his eyes off of her, and she blushes. She takes his hand and they walk through the tables to the dance floor. 

The song is slow and lulling, and he takes her next up next to him, one hand falling just above her bum, and the other hand woven in her own. 

They rock back and forth to the music, and as much as she wants to, she doesn’t feel brave enough to look him in the eye, as if should she look the wrong way, or if she were to look too long, she might divulge something dangerous, something that might get them all into trouble, even if he wouldn’t mean to.

“Why were you there the other night?” he whispers softly.

The question takes her off guard, and it causes her to answer honestly before she can help herself.

“I was at Jack’s.”

His brows furrow and his jaw steels again. “Are you and he…?” he asks after a moment.

“What?” she starts. “You mean, are we…?” She deliberately widens her eyes as if to mime the word they both mean with a significant glance.

“No, of course not,” she continues.

His body, which she just notices had gone tense, relaxes visibly.

“Oh, that’s…that’s good.” They sway some more, and he notices the flare of freckles across his face that stand out in this light. “Then why were you there?” he asks finally.

“Music,” she replies simply.

“Music?”

“Promise not to tell?” she asks, knowing that if he meant her harm, a promise to a silly girl wouldn’t stop him, but he nods.

“Jack has jazz records, and he lets me borrow them.”

Jazz records were illegal under the Third Reich.

“You learn the songs and then you sing them here?”

“I learn some of them, but sometimes I just like to listen. It can be so happy, jazz, but it can be so sad too, you know? That’s why I like it. It’s honest.”

“You have a beautiful voice,” he says in response. “When you sing it feels like the songs are your own, not like you’re parroting words to something you don’t really feel.”

She looks up at him this time, looks him in the eye and smiles softly. “Thank you,” she says, and moments later, the song ends.

The pianist will start another song soon, and she finds herself quite determined to dance with him for it, but he starts to pull away.

She thinks that he is to leave now, to grab his coat—he wore the pinstriped one she gave him—and go, not to return for several days. But instead he takes her   
hand and laces their fingers together and leans to her ear.

“Can I show you something?” he asks.

“Show me what?” She likes the feeling of their hands together, even if part of her still isn’t sure it’s a good idea.

“We’d have to leave here. But it’s close.”

“Is it safe?” she asks. It’s after curfew, and she has to be discreet getting back from work as it is.

“Probably not, but you’re safe with me.”

She wants to believe him, so she tries it and nods in ascent, casting a look over to Jack behind the bar, whose eyes are large with doubt, but she simply waves at him and they duck out the door, up the steps, and onto the street. He would probably be angry with her later. She was being stupid, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care.

The night is cool again as if spring is in doubt of itself, but it is still warm enough to be comfortable. It is a clear night, and the sky is dark and profound, as if she could reach through the air and grab a star with her fingers.

“Where are we going?” she asks as they take a corner, and then another.

“Have you ever been to Burrgarten?” he asks.

“You’re taking be to Burrgarten? Of course I’ve been to Burrgarten.” Burrgarten was a public park.

“But have you ever been at night?” he counters.

“I—well, no.”

He smiles and they keep going for a couple of blocks. When they enter the park, they skip the pathways and walk on the grass, and she has to remove her shoes because the heels sink through the earth. It makes her feet chilly, but soon they stop in the middle of a more or less open part of the park, save for a few trees.

He shrugs off his jacket and lays it on the ground, motions for her to sit when he does, and he lies back on the grass and she follows suit.

“Best view in Vienna without having to leave the city proper,” he says once they’ve settled onto the grass.

“You come here a lot?”

“When I want to get out of my head,” he replies, not looking at her, but up at the sky. There are several moments of silence in which they sit looking up at the stars.

“Why are we here?” she asks eventually.

“It’s a nice way of looking at Vienna,” he says, “without having to look at what it’s become. The stars are still part of the city.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Is what why I did it?”

“Did you jump because you’re lost in a city you don’t know anymore?”

“Not really,” he says. “That’s not the only reason.”

“Then what was?”

“So many questions,” he sighs.

“Well,” she starts, “don’t you think it’s a little unfair, a little dangerous, even, that I’ve come all the way to this park at night alone with a man I know nothing about, not to mention is a known officer of the Gestapo?”

“When you put it like that…but then, I don’t know anything about you either.”

“Sure you do. You know where I work, where I live, how old I am, my favorite music.”

“Fair, I suppose,” he replies, but remains silent.

“Why did you do it?” she persists.

He doesn’t say anything.

“All right, then, fine. Where are you from?”

“That star, just over there. First star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.”

She rolls her eyes. “Really, though.”

“Salzburg. I came to Vienna after the war.”

“Did you fight?”

“No. I was in medical school, but I trained in hospitals that tended to soldiers who overflowed from the military hospitals.”

“You were young.”

“I was nineteen then, I suppose, like you now.”

She realizes that during this entire time, they haven’t stopped holding hands, and she becomes acutely aware of the fact but doesn’t make a move to change it.

“Is it very different now?”

He shrugs. “The world is still full of terrible things, so I suppose that it isn’t.”

“That’s why you did it, then,” she surmises.

He turns his head from the stars, finally, to look at her.

“Because you’ve lived through it once and now it’s happening again,” she continues. “And you feel helpless to stop it, and you feel like you’re part of it, even. 

You feel complicit in all of the horror, but you only wanted to help heal, when it turned out everything was just crumbling even more before you. And now you’re stuck, and you’re drowning in so much guilt, how much different would it be to drown for real?” She finishes speaking and breathes in measured breaths.

It might have been ten seconds, or it might have been ten lifetimes, but for a moment time feels relative, and before he really knows what he’s doing, he leans over and kisses her. Her lips are cool, but when she cedes to the initial surprise, she opens her mouth to him and he can feel the warmth of her tongue. And suddenly she’s kissing him back and she looses her hand from his. For a moment he is afraid she is going to pull away, but she adjusts her body so that she can pull him closer, and her hand weaves into his hair and she is very enthusiastic. 

He is terrified. She has his secrets now. He has hers. Now he understands her wariness. They have no reason to trust each other, but every reason to stay.

After a moment, they break away, and she is breathing as hard as he is.

“That was…that was very nice,” he says lamely.

“It was.”

“It was also probably a bad idea.”

There is a beat, but then she replies, “I thought you said that people ought to make more of those.”

“You catch on quickly,” he responds, and dips his head again to kiss her.

She responds again with relish, but in a lazy way that feels easy, as if they’ve been doing it for ages, like they are two lovers reunited. He rolls on top of her, feels the heat of her skin through his trousers and it makes him dizzy.

“Not here,” she says, breaking away.

“You’re probably right,” he responds with some reluctance. “Do you know a place we can--”

“There’s a room above the club,” she gasps. “Jack, um, he has some of his liaisons there.”

“Right,” he says, and is quickly on his feet, pulling her up with him. He shrugs on his jacket and laces their fingers together, taking off in the direction they came but in an entirely different direction altogether.

\--

The room is as dingy as the club itself. She gets the key from Jack, who simply raises an eyebrow and gives her a cheeky sort of grin before digging it out of his pocket. He seems to trust her enough to know she wouldn’t do anything irreparably stupid.  
They stagger through the door, there bodies pressed together as if they are clinging to each other as their last hope. The room is dark, and she flips the switch by the door, which illuminates a small, yellow bulb on the ceiling.

It’s a simple place. There is a bed and nightstand and a small chest-of-drawers with a mirror hanging above. There isn’t a bathroom, and instead there is a small basin that sits on top of the chest-of-drawers to serve as a sink.

Right now, though, she isn’t thinking about any of that, but instead pushes him towards the bed. The sheets are probably fresh, she hopes fleetingly; Jack runs a pretty tight ship.

Standing, he presses open-mouthed kisses into her neck, and she lets out a soft moan. His hand bunches up her skirt so that he can feel the softness of her leg, his palm making its way closer to the apex of her thighs. But before he can get there, she’s covered some ground of her own, cups him through his trousers, and he thinks with the last shred of rationality left in his brain that even if this isn’t a good idea, it’s still the best bad idea he’s made to date.

He pushes them onto the bed, and to her relief, the sheets smell clean and fresh. His lips crush into hers. She starts to work on the buttons of his shirt, but her hands are shaking, and he grins teasingly before taking over and shedding his shirt and jacket all at once onto the floor.

“Would they call this sleeping with the enemy?” he whispers with his lips right up next to her ear.

“You’re not the enemy,” she says breathily, before smiling, her tongue catching again between her teeth. “And I’d hardly contend that there will be much in the line of sleeping.”

“Quite right,” he replies, divesting her of her shirt, which he flings to the other side of the room. She’s left in a white brassiere and her skirt. 

She flicks the button of his trousers and he stands up, shakes, and the fall to his ankles. He really is thin, she thinks, but it’s muscle and sinew and his skin is pale and freckled and she hopes he didn’t just hear the guttural noise that came from the back of her throat. 

He pushes her back against he pillows, works his hands from her ankles up her thighs to her knees where he places a kiss on the inside of each. His hands and lips continue their journey upward until he reaches the soft cotton of her knickers. He swipes his thumb over the center before hooking his fingers over the sides and gently working them down her legs.

Though her nerves are on fire, all she can see is a lump under her skirt.

“I want to see you,” she coos, and she can feel his cheeks rise in a smile against her thighs. He comes up, words the buttons fastening her skirt and removes it so fast it’s practically a flash of periwinkle that lands somewhere over by the chest-of-drawers. She props herself up, flicks the fastening of her brassiere, and discards that off the side of the bed as well.

He is breathing hard, his chest rising up and down, and for the first time she chances to look all the way up and down his body. 

He’s hard and excited and looks very, very ready, and her breath hitches and she isn’t thinking about where he comes from or whom he works for or their considerable age difference; she just thinks yes, this is right, and in the next moment his body is covering hers again.

“Now,” she whimpers. He doesn’t need to be persuaded, and he slides in, both of them releasing groans.

She bites her lip as he pulls back to thrust again. He’s closing his eyes, but it looks as though they’re rolled back.

“Yes,” she gasps. He growls and thrusts again, and the bed creaks. 

This will be fast, he knows it will, she does too, and they’re both wound so tightly, feel so much urgency that he comes moments later and she follows soon after.

They will do it again, she hopes, later, and they will take their time.

“How did you know?” he asks into her shoulder, the weight of him resting on her as they both recover.

“What?”

“From before. How did you know all of that about me?”

“Because it’s what everyone worries about, Doctor. You have to know that you aren’t alone.”

He pushes off from her, reclining on the pillows, and she sidles up against him, pushing the hair out of his face.

“We’ll have to run,” he says, staring at the ceiling. “We’ll have to get out.”

She takes his hand, squeezes it firmly. “Tomorrow.”

_Let’s do it.  
Let’s fall in love. _


End file.
